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screen printing => General Screen Printing => Topic started by: avogel on June 30, 2018, 09:48:07 AM
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I am looking for some feedback on realistic net production numbers from a 3 man production crew. We have recently started doing some large run (for us, 10 - 15k) contract orders. The first order was navy shirts with 1 color white print on front. We setup 3 white screens, single stroke, with 2 flashes. Shirts are counted in and stacked on tables for the day by a prep person. 3 man team is expected to print, catch, count and box. How many shirts would you expect this team to NET at the end of an 8 hour shift? Job was setup and ran some the day before. They have 20 minute paid lunch in there. Job is medium coverage. Take in to account, adding ink, stops for lint, reloading from tables to carts, bathroom breaks, etc. Our shop is not ac, so factor a little fatigue, it was 92 when they started and 108 at end of shift. I set them a goal of 3000 per shift.
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when they were running - how many dozens per hour were they printing? i.e. how fast were they able to load consistently all day?
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500 - 600 per hour running speed. My main loader can get up close to 700 but there is to many crooked prints at that speed especially on the larger sizes.
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That is exactly how my shop runs on a consistent basis.
3 people on the large runs, and 2 people on the smaller runs.
Our large runs go from 5-7k pieces with 3 locations.
We will use a loader, unloaded and catcher.
Each person is trained on each position, so when one person goes on break, we slow the press a bit, and 1 person can load and unload, and one person can catch. Then that first person takes over.
Sometimes we just let the shirts pile in a bin, and the catcher just plays catch up.
We run 35 dozen per hour with 2 people loading and unloading.
With one person loading and unloading we run at 30 dozen per hour.
On average I know we should be able to hit 2,000 impressions in a 8 hour shift. If for some reason we fall below that, I know it?s due to the heat. We will start printing at 5:00am and run to 2:00pm and call it a day.
I?m not a big shop that can do 1k prints in a hour, but we try with these jobs to work as long as we can without stopping.
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We have only had our auto up and running about a month and a half, so i am probably slower than I could be, but i usually solo load and unload at around 35 to 38 dozen with breaks every hour or so. There are two main things that I know make this slower than we could be running as well. First, 90% of our shirts are canvas or next level, and when I run a gildan or port and co job I am easily about 3 or 4 dozen faster. Second, the raised pallet design of our saber means shirts frequently catch on the pallet arm and loadind requires an extra step to clear the arm on any smaller sizes. With an unloader I have hit 60 dozen a few times, but usually hover closer to 50 to 52 comfortably. The bottleneck for us is actually our dryer at this point, not the press. If we do 2000 impressions on a full front or back in a shift I am happy right now, especially considering all the assorted other crap i need to do during the day besides just printing.
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By myself I run around 32 doz / hr. With two operators we max out around 68doz / hr on the 10clr sportsman. But that is balls to the wall and not too realistic for production in the heat. Day to day we run on average 45-48 doz with two on the press and a catcher. Running 7-10 setups / day (one machine) at the moment between 50-500 pcs. We will usually set up 2-3 jobs on press and will switch to one operator @ while the other tears down screens with the press moving. Kind of wish we had bigger runs... setup time is our wall. But the grass is always greener as they say.
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You?re not going to like this..
3000 shirts is a piss poor day honestly for a 10k pc run. That?s 3.5 days of solid work.. gotta go faster!
Goal should be 5500 per day if they walk into everything ready to go.
A 3 man crew should easily hit 4500 per shift if it?s the same print all day and thats with 2 breaks, a lunch and moving their own product.
Sportys run about 72 dz an hour max.. that?s 864 an hour.
Run for 7 hours and you?ll print 6048 shirts.
I?d love to tell you what we Spin the Roq?s at with only 7 people all together running 4 machines and two dryers but you won?t believe me, you have to see it to believe it. The crew runs solo in the 350-400 per hour range and we exceed 1000 pcs per hour when we team up and help unload. We knocked out 10k shirts the other week with front, back in 3 days. We ran at 850-1050 per hour all day till it was done then went right into the next job up and running 10 minutes later. Shop was over 100, it was high 90?s outside and we all just did our job.
The name of the game is prep, make sure the next job is ready to go and help the press turnover and get going ASAP.
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Maybe I'm missing something, but how are you going more than twice as fast with 2 people vs one person? loading takes longer than unloading+index time/grabbing the next shirt from what I have seen on our press, so the gain from adding a second person is a little under twice as fast. It definitely isnt 2.5 times as fast for us.
I'm entirely sure we could be more efficient since we are pretty much brand new to our auto, but I've also noticed that real world numbers when you factor in re-inking, stoppage for lint (and refreshing the tack on our lint screen), refreshing the tack on pallets, changing shirt carts, etc knock our numbers down by probably 10% at best.
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The difference is in the index rate/speed of the press.
Also, on the Roq's and a couple other presses - the carousel does not go up and down - so that saves a lot of time over 8 hours production time.
Makes it VERY easy to hit higher rates per hour.
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We are running a Roq press. The carousel not going up and down definitely makes loading and unloading easier. I was mostly trying to get a gauge for what people realistically net versus the we run at X per hour "all day long" speed. It sounds like if we run 550 per hour "all day long", 3000 - 3500 net would be a good realistic production standard. Once we get there we can work on getting our gross run rate up.
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How do we do it, the pause pedal.
I?ve been a press op most of my career and are not new to 1000+ hours. Getting to that rate and staying there on a blue wasn?t that hard, until you had any problems with the load. Choice was to let it go, yank it off and let the no sensor catch it or flip to finish, load next and flip back to run. Easy but it was a missed shirt and lost time.
Now you?re running solo, sometimes you wait for the next board, sometimes your stopping when you get a bad load then it?s switches and missed boards and time again.
the pause pedal.. if need just that much more time to load, step on the pedal and the press waits for you.. step off and back in it. No skips no wasted board at the cost of a fraction of a second. Step on it a little longer and I can add some fresh glue or go into finish ad glue then when it comes back start the load as I go push all the inks and back to unload without stopping the press.
It?s a real beast in solo mode as now the press goes as fast as you. With a double base or double stroke HSA or WB work you can set the perfect pace and just go.
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How do we do it, the pause pedal.
I?ve been a press op most of my career and are not new to 1000+ hours. Getting to that rate and staying there on a blue wasn?t that hard, until you had any problems with the load. Choice was to let it go, yank it off and let the no sensor catch it or flip to finish, load next and flip back to run. Easy but it was a missed shirt and lost time.
Now you?re running solo, sometimes you wait for the next board, sometimes your stopping when you get a bad load then it?s switches and missed boards and time again.
the pause pedal.. if need just that much more time to load, step on the pedal and the press waits for you.. step off and back in it. No skips no wasted board at the cost of a fraction of a second. Step on it a little longer and I can add some fresh glue or go into finish ad glue then when it comes back start the load as I go push all the inks and back to unload without stopping the press.
It?s a real beast in solo mode as now the press goes as fast as you. With a double base or double stroke HSA or WB work you can set the perfect pace and just go.
Is this pause pedal only for Roc's / higher end / newer M&R's? We use a foot pedal to skip a pallet, but it sure would be nice to pause! Don't see a way to program that on our Sportsman E Circa 2009.
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Our press has a pedal that can be programmed for pause or skip, we use it as a pause. My question isn't about the speed itself, but why you would more than double that speed with 2 people vs one. How are you going from 400 to 1050 an hour when the time saved by the second person is the time it takes to unload and grab another shirt during the index, but the loading takes longer than both of those actions together based on what im seeing in our shop. I could see going from 650 to 1050, but not understanding how the jump is 400 to 1050.
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I only read a little bit so correct me here if I'm wrong by saying this, but every shop does not have the same size press or dryer, so how long it takes one shop to output 10K is going to be very different than a shop with a bigger press and larger dryer. A lot of people on here talk about speed, but for me if I have a shop with only 1 or maybe two auto's I'm not going to worry about speed but concentrate on quality production, I see those large shops with 6 or more auto's worry more about speed because of the volume they need to keep the doors open. So to me there is really no production standard unless your comparing your shop to another that is set up the same as your own.
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You?re not going to like this..
3000 shirts is a piss poor day honestly for a 10k pc run. That?s 3.5 days of solid work.. gotta go faster!
Goal should be 5500 per day if they walk into everything ready to go.
A 3 man crew should easily hit 4500 per shift if it?s the same print all day and thats with 2 breaks, a lunch and moving their own product.
Sportys run about 72 dz an hour max.. that?s 864 an hour.
Run for 7 hours and you?ll print 6048 shirts.
I?d love to tell you what we Spin the Roq?s at with only 7 people all together running 4 machines and two dryers but you won?t believe me, you have to see it to believe it. The crew runs solo in the 350-400 per hour range and we exceed 1000 pcs per hour when we team up and help unload. We knocked out 10k shirts the other week with front, back in 3 days. We ran at 850-1050 per hour all day till it was done then went right into the next job up and running 10 minutes later. Shop was over 100, it was high 90?s outside and we all just did our job.
The name of the game is prep, make sure the next job is ready to go and help the press turnover and get going ASAP.
I've always wondered about this in terms of waterbased inks. We can hit that no problem, with plastisol, but with double stroking waterbed ink, we typically hit around 400-500/pc per hour with a loader and unloader.
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Our press has a pedal that can be programmed for pause or skip, we use it as a pause. My question isn't about the speed itself, but why you would more than double that speed with 2 people vs one. How are you going from 400 to 1050 an hour when the time saved by the second person is the time it takes to unload and grab another shirt during the index, but the loading takes longer than both of those actions together based on what im seeing in our shop. I could see going from 650 to 1050, but not understanding how the jump is 400 to 1050.
Pulling the shirt off the press and putting it on the dryer takes longer than loading a shirt. Then factor in all the press work is now done by two people on the roundabout way I mentioned and there is your 1.5 multiplier.
loading is really throwing a shirt on a board and pulling it back straight. If that guy is slowing you down then they need more training or a boot to the ass.
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I only read a little bit so correct me here if I'm wrong by saying this, but every shop does not have the same size press or dryer, so how long it takes one shop to output 10K is going to be very different than a shop with a bigger press and larger dryer.
A lot of people on here talk about speed, but for me if I have a shop with only 1 or maybe two auto'sI'm not going to worry about speed but concentrate on quality production,
I see those large shops with 6 or more auto's worry more about speed because of the volume they need to keep the doors open. So to me there is really no production standard unless your comparing your shop to another that is set up the same as your own.
Yes each shop will vary on capacity. What?s changing is the velocity at which the shop produces at.
If you have the ability to produce 6000 garments a day, but only do 3000 ?on a good day? then something is wrong.
You print the inkset in the screens as fast as it will allow you to. Thats where quality and speed have brunch together, get drunk then freak in the backseat and produce 5500 piece days.
Big shops aren?t just running fast to keep doors open, those guys have more in receiving than your average shop did in the last 5 years. they?re performing at the optimum level that the equipment was designed to run at. You don?t buy a race car to drive on the street kind of thing unless you just want to be that guy who wins impressions awards.
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3K should be your minimum. I am happy with 4K even though we can, and often do a lot more.
Equipment is not the only thing in play here. High temps and hard driving your employees erodes the morale. Goal of our company is to improve lives so making ppl miserable does not gel with it.
Treat your ppl well, and they will step up when needed.
pierre
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Keeping the doors open is just an expression, but your right right those guys buy equipment that can handle there work load...now what is this "get drunk then freak in the backseat and produce 5500 piece days." ;D I also agree with you P I've been on the end of working like a dog and it can get old fast!!!!!!!
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j i'm still interested to in seeing what your thoughts are on shops that are working with waterbased ink. I know shops like Danny's are doing more and more wb, but what is realistic production for those? it takes more time double stroking, and more staff to achieve more efficiency.
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Here is where a Roq plays into those double stroke production numbers
Each head is independent of the others and prints at its set speed.
Head 1 can have a double stroke base at max flood/print and be able to finish its job before head 4, after the iron, has a really slow flood, to give extra cool down time, then fast print in the same time as head one did two strokes. Goes even faster when you have the programming for down flood so now the head doesn?t angle up on 2nd flood/print.
Watching a Roq print is different in that all heads work at different speeds, on the ecos of course.
other machines, each stroke much finish before the cycle can repeat. M&R prints and waits for the rest of the heads to finish, example is run a slow flood.. the machine waits until the flood finishes before every head does a print stroke. then drops or stays up for 2nd flood and waits for all heads to finish. Yea it?s a slow and boring process and why we try to avoid it all costs.
The Roq can still do 500 an hour with double stroke while others struggle to get past 350 hr.
I don?t see the guys being driven here, they all want to do what they?re doing. I?ve seen driven crews under bad supers where the morale sucks but not here. This crew is lean mean top producers. I?ve been told many operators have come through over the years that don?t make the cut or can?t keep up. Two of the guys here have more drive than I do and that?s saying tons. I know how to run a press and these guys run circles around me. I thought I knew what good production was, have run amazing numbers in the past and always ran a tight floor... then I got here and saw what real production looks like being done by half the staff I was used to. Good people and good machines do make all the difference.
A far as watebase.. HSA and what not is double stroke and realistic numbers are in the 350-500 hr range as it runs solo. No point in dropping an extra 125 a day for another body to stand there when one guy does it all. Bigger machines and better ink is on the horizon as we all venture into pvc free inks.
danny really wants to dump all the plastic ink and go HSA, and I fully support that decision, can?t wait for it to happen but we have a bunch of environmental conditions to tackle before that happens so we don?t fall into the same pits others have making the switch.
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The way we have our dryer setup in relation to our unloaded station it takes less than 2 seconds to unload, solo or in tandem. No way you're loading faster than that, so I don't get how your 1.5x as fast with 2 people unless the setup isn't ideal on that front. What am I missing?
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John, what you describe about the S Roq sounds pretty much the same as the MHM S Type. I actually prefer the MHM where only the screens lift up and down.
I have not managed to find loaders/unloaders who can maintain more than 600 an hour.
We also have a set where he printers have other functions, mix colors, etc and we do a lot of small runs so our average is much lower.
I know there are shops where the printers only print, their numbers will also be higher.
I?d be very happy with 4000 per machine per shift, in our shop 3000 is more realistic.
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The way we have our dryer setup in relation to our unloaded station it takes less than 2 seconds to unload, solo or in tandem. No way you're loading faster than that, so I don't get how your 1.5x as fast with 2 people unless the setup isn't ideal on that front. What am I missing?
we at least double the printing speed with a puller. One person maxes out around 450 and we've done 1200 with two. Just for the record, these are printing numbers not final tallies. Best we've done, as far as I can remember, is 1k fronts (2+ubase), dryer, flip, 1k backs (1+ubase) and then boxing it all up in 2 hours and 15 min. So that's almost 1k/hour produced.
Setup is as ergonomic as possible. Loader does not move and puller has a half step.
pierre
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I guess I would need to see a video and compare. Loading is the slower action for us. All of this is moot though for us as the sabre seems to pretty much max out on a 10" tall front design at around 60 dozen.
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Our unloader when we have one also will open up the tail of the shirt to stop me from having to fiddle around with those sometimes stuck together tails and also they will straighten the shirt back up if the one below the shirt you are grabbing sticks and falls back down on the stack in a wad. This helps significantly. On a day when everything is running close to perfect, we can knockout 3800 to 4000 shirts. That's if we have everything set and ready to go when we get here.
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I guess I would need to see a video and compare. Loading is the slower action for us. All of this is moot though for us as the sabre seems to pretty much max out on a 10" tall front design at around 60 dozen.
I just uploaded a video to my youtube.
https://youtu.be/XMWblwai2g4
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Small print and zero glue. Wish all jobs were that easy :)
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Didnt have time to film when the glue took two hands and had to be ripped from the boards. This is towards the end of the stack as the glue got easy.
Print size was a standard front.. or was this the back. Both prints had 12? strokes.
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Small print and zero glue. Wish all jobs were that easy :)
giant unfitted shirts too. I can't remember the last time we didnt print on a 4oz fitted shirt skewed toward smaller sizes...
It looks like your unloader has to do a full 180 and take a step each time. Ours stands sideways, grabs the shirt, and just shuffles slightly to the right. shirts are lifted and pulled onto the end of the belt in one motion, no change in orientation. loader does a little less than a quarter turn with their shoulders to grab the shirt while the press indexes, then loads in one motion and straightens as the stand back up. The unloader is consistently finished and ready for the next shirt prior to the loader finishing the straightening. I'll grab a video sometime this week for advice, but I'm not sure how the unloader would ever have to take more time to do fewer steps with our setup.
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I cant explain it any better, if you cant figure it out by now.. smh
No.. hes not 180.. shirt stack is at his left side next to his hip face up.
Happy 4th, im out!
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Small print and zero glue. Wish all jobs were that easy :)
24? stroke. 1383 an hour
https://youtu.be/xQkLs1-pROM
An M&R can certainly do this also.
On long runs 800-900 an hour with plastisol on a basic T-shirt should be no problem at all.
8 hour shift realistically 3 people should get our 4500-5000 no problem. Where you are going to miss your numbers is when your loader has to go get the next cart or shirts. Or stop to push ink. Watch how much time someone will take to do those things. If every 300 shirts you miss 5 minutes that adds up.
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After reading the upgrade press post and the direction it is going, I thought I would bring this back up and update our progress. I replaced one of our press operators with myself.
We are using 4 people total. We were having 1 person count and layout the shirts the day before. Then using a 3 person team to run the order, box, label and skid. They were averaging about 2000 per day. We are now using the 4th person to unbox and stack as well as help with reboxing, labeling and skidding (they are doing some other duties as well). The job was a 4 color print, 8100 shirts, from start to finish took us 22 hours.
Our goal on these orders is still 3000 per day. Anything above 2700 I consider a really solid day. With only 1 auto I am evaluating whether or not these large contract runs are really worth it. Most of them are 1 or 2 colors so they aren't much money when that is all you do in a day. That is another discussion tho.
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How many hours a week is your press working?....I find that most folks spread their overhead over 40 to 50 hours....Maybe 60.......But there are 168 hours in a week....If contract work is taking up time in the 40 to 60 hours, you are probably correct that it is not worth it if you have to delay or worse yet turn away retail work......But if you do it in hours outside the window where your overhead is already covered, it should work out okay....
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A lot of info about loading and unloading speeds, what about catching?
Our catchers can only catch and stack in organized piles about 600 an hour, we usually put the shirts in piles of 10.
Faster than that they just roughly stack and then have to sort them later or someone else has to finish the packing.
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What are you having your catchers do - other than just catching and stack/folding the shirts?
At 600 per hour my guys could catch/check for pinholes, mill defects, and bad prints/fold in dozens and usually get final size counts as the run finishes up so we could fill in any missing shirts. Typically, they would box up after the run was finished, unless there was downtime during the run. I wanted them to focus on making sure the product looked great and was finished properly. I was pretty proud of how good they were at their job, very clean, great looking shirt stacks, almost nothing slipped by them. Above 700 everything slows down though...
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Great responses on all sides however I believe Colin may be spot on with the human factor. While we may all proud of how fast our machines might be rated, I still believe this is our constraint. However perfect or imperfect that might be.
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Colin, what you listed is what we’d do, up to about 600.
Over that we either need two two people or to check and pack after printing.
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This is exactly what we found with the catcher also. It was beneficial for us to add the 4th person. They unpacked the order and loaded on carts and also helped box, label and skid finished product. I used my screen guy for this, he still had enough time to emulsion and burn a few screens too.
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We found our max today! 4400 prints 8 hours and a feel like a Cartoon character after loading that mess! We ran 57 doz / hour on the sporty, Which will dry cycle around 61 doz. Slower than the roqs / g3 / ch3. But it’s a benchmark for somethin. if we didn’t run a lint screen wouldn’t have made it in time. It hurt, but it’s on a apallet, wrapped and out the door wed!!! Woohoo!
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You can make that sport run 75 doz per hour.
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You can make that sport run 75 doz per hour.
Whats the trick? All of our timers are @ zero, running flood & sq @ 10. I think I can go into the service mode and shorten the some of the delays (index / table rise), but I've been hesitant to do that. I could also probably play with the air on the table drop a bit, but I like it to run smooth and not shake apart! . Mind you this is a 10/12 Sportsman E circa 2009 (servo / AC) which we picked up on the used market last November. Maybe the new ones are quicker? Maybe I need to spend a weekend tuning her up.
Either way I have to admit i'm a little stiff from yesterday. And I run 20-30 miles / week. The human limit has definitely got to be around 4500-5K prints / day for a loader. I think I can confirm that!
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Kudos on that run! 4400 is impressive.
Hopefully you had a cold beer to celebrate :)
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Kudos on that run! 4400 is impressive.
Hopefully you had a cold beer to celebrate :)
At least 8 and a fat steak from Texas Roadhouse!
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This all has me wondering how fast we can print, and how long we can maintain that pace without driving our people into the ground. We have a potential job coming up that would be just under 80k impressions, white on red tees, somewhere in the 12" x 12" print size range. We have 2 ROQ YOU's and think, realistically, 4k-4.5k per 8 hours per press. That puts us about 10 days of printing without running a second shift (which we would probably do).
The real question is can our crew maintain that pace for days on end without becoming vegetables. Our shop doesn't have ac and the Florida heat is at it's peak. If we get the job it will be due on 8/31, so I'll report back and let you know :)
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That sounds like a nightmare honestly. I would probably want another press at least for that kind of turnaround unless you're planning on focusing solely on that job...
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Well, we won't be able to answer these questions. Someone is doing it cheaper. Imagine that.
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I'm pretty new to high volume stuff, but we are doing doing 2800 impressions a day right now and can't keep up with demand. Have had a few 15k and 20k orders already and have had our auto for like 3 or 4 months. Made a usually slow summer insane, which is a good thing, but now with fall picking back up with "standard" business, those huge jobs clog up the press with low margins vs those 250 to 500 shirt higher color count jobs. If I was hurting for business 80k would be a great way to keep presses running, but I can't help but think you'd make more money with less work on lower volume stuff in that same time, especially this time of year. August and September are our second busiest time of year usually.
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Turn the air knobs so the press raises and lowers quicker. You'll find the sweet spot right before it starts to "thud/clang". 2013 press runs 77-80 doz on a left chest. 600/hr is good running with stoppages. Make all other employees make sure your operator can keep running. Keep it running over lunch... so there is no boards to heat up etc. When you need to re-glue boards, have another employee loading ink/wiping screens for fuzzballs. Come in early and get it going so there are shirts falling when everyone else arrives.
Most time wasted: Starting in morning, restarting over lunch, loading inks.
But as we've figured out. Working harder for cheap contract work...isn't worth it. We are down about 100k revenue from last year, but profit is the exact same....and I'm not working 80 hour weeks.
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But as we've figured out. Working harder for cheap contract work...isn't worth it. We are down about 100k revenue from last year, but profit is the exact same....and I'm not working 80 hour weeks.
amen to that